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I personally think this will all go back somewhat. With which I mean, information about us being collected without our knowledge and everybody having all their

I personally think this will all go back somewhat. With which I mean, information about us being collected without our knowledge and everybody having all their data made available to big companies. One reason for me to believe this, is that it's already getting somewhat creepy, even for the general public. When the new invigilation systems at china get demonized in public media, people will start to care about privacy a lot more. Which will open a lot of market space for companies focusing on privacy. Apple is one company I have in mind here. But, especially with articles about homomorphic encryption coming up more regularly and a lot of research on how to train ML systems with anonymization on end user devices (a blog post about Siri and differential privacy comes to mind) going on, I think companies will start to cater more to those needs of society. End-to-end encryption is already a standard feature in new messenger applications. Another good sign, at least in Europe, is GDPR.

gonmf 8y ago
I disagree. I think that companies have such a vast and strong grasp on public discourse, opinion, and even whole countries, that it will only get worse and worse. I'm sure some companies will sell "privacy" at a premium for the few that can afford it, but I don't see any future where there will be actual riots in the streets for privacy.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  Yeah I have to agree here. I don't see this getting any better. Look at how many people are willing to give up their entire lives worth of privacy to FB just so they can chat to friends, which they could do on any number of IMs and other services. People just don't care. It's a very very tiny minority who actually do, and the big companies and Governments are quite happy to ignore that problem until it goes away, as the vast majority pf people are steam-rolling any chance of privacy mattering in the future by accepting all this.
  - cube2222 8y ago
    I agree they don't care, now at least. My opinion's that they will, after the situation in China will have been demonized in public media / books.
    - gonmf 8y ago
      But it won't, there's too much money involved to demonize China. And there are many other such examples of mass surveillance from the five eyes, CCTVs in major cities, less and less "freedom" in the web. Just this week in my country (western European) the whole database of everyone that enters and leaves the country was moved from the police to the secret services, to avoid any kind of scrutiny.
lovemenot 8y ago
It's good that you are both aware and optimistic. Personally, I don't share this viewpoint. But I hope your optimism is well-founded. China is indeed the canary in the coal mine. Lack of privacy there is explicit and almost universally accepted. Will this become the new normal? Nobody knows, but I believe the answer is - yes it will. In the medium term, the world will come to follow, rather than reject China's approach. To mitigate such an eventuality, we must study and take guidance from privacy outliers in China.

gonmf 8y ago

I disagree. I think that companies have such a vast and strong grasp on public discourse, opinion, and even whole countries, that it will only get worse and worse. I'm sure some companies will sell "privacy" at a premium for the few that can afford it, but I don't see any future where there will be actual riots in the streets for privacy.

ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
Yeah I have to agree here. I don't see this getting any better. Look at how many people are willing to give up their entire lives worth of privacy to FB just so they can chat to friends, which they could do on any number of IMs and other services. People just don't care. It's a very very tiny minority who actually do, and the big companies and Governments are quite happy to ignore that problem until it goes away, as the vast majority pf people are steam-rolling any chance of privacy mattering in the future by accepting all this.
- cube2222 8y ago
  I agree they don't care, now at least. My opinion's that they will, after the situation in China will have been demonized in public media / books.
  - gonmf 8y ago
    But it won't, there's too much money involved to demonize China. And there are many other such examples of mass surveillance from the five eyes, CCTVs in major cities, less and less "freedom" in the web. Just this week in my country (western European) the whole database of everyone that enters and leaves the country was moved from the police to the secret services, to avoid any kind of scrutiny.

lovemenot 8y ago

It's good that you are both aware and optimistic. Personally, I don't share this viewpoint. But I hope your optimism is well-founded. China is indeed the canary in the coal mine. Lack of privacy there is explicit and almost universally accepted. Will this become the new normal? Nobody knows, but I believe the answer is - yes it will. In the medium term, the world will come to follow, rather than reject China's approach. To mitigate such an eventuality, we must study and take guidance from privacy outliers in China.